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Airfix 1/24th Spitfire Mk. Ia- Completed


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Well, I finished this big scale Spitfire. This is the most recent re-release. I built it for a commission build. After I got started, I remembered I had an very old AMT boxing stashed under my bed. I compared the parts.... I should have gone with the older kit. Much better when the molds were newer! Anyway....

It's no shake and bake, but it's not too much trouble either. Lots of flash to clean up and so forth, but it goes together decent and looks the part. It's mostly OOB- I did add a Grey Matters seat, stick and u/c lever, as well as some tape belts.

Lowers are Tamiya Sky, uppers are Tamiya RAF Dark Green and Gunze Dark Earth.

The customer asked for the wheels to be retracted, so I had to sit it on a plastic tub for the pictures. :)

I do hope Airfix will retool this kit in this scale... I'd love to have a modern tooling of it.

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Edited by jonbius
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What a beauty. It seems that the older Airfix kits in this scale has o lot to offer, even nowadays.The surfaces are not refined by making own rivets?

A very tempting build !

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Thanks for the kind words everyone!

You've done an amazing job on such a challenging kit!

I have the MKV and every time I open the box the flash scares the living day lights out of me!

Well done,

Rick.

It does require nearly every part to be sanded and test fitted. On my example, it appeared tha thte molds were slightly misaligned, so each part had a bit of an offset.

A great build and finish. She really looks like a Spitfire!

You may want to use manual white balance on your camera to avoid that heavy red/yellow colour cast that obscures the true colours of the machine.

Kind regards,

Joachim

I would if I had one! My camera is so cheap it doesn't have that setting. :)

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Very nice Spitfire. May I ask how you got your decals to snuggle down so nicely?

Thank you!

First, I coated the area where I planned to apply the decal with a 50/50 mixture of water and Future. I then applied the decal. Using a small piece of paper towel, I smoothed the decal out and worked out bubbles and wrinkles. Next, I applied several coats of Solvaset. After allowing it to dry, I used a new #11 blade to lightly score the decal where the panel lines were, and applied more Solvaset. I also used the blade to slice through any bubbles, silver in or wrinkles, and apply Solvaset to those also.

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I'm working my way through a mkv at the moment and I seem to remember it was a lot better years ago. Nice job on that did you sand the rivets down a touch because the fuselage ones on mine are Huge?

Thanks!

Yes, I did sand them down. Not completely off, but rather left enough to catch some of the wash I applied to give it some surface interest.I thought about the issue of the areas that were flush versus not flush, but I figured since the customer might not know that, doing a more realistic finish would look odd. So I went for a uniform look.

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